


Reaching for memories, there's nothing but dust

by trialbyfic



Series: It's been too long [3]
Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Memory Loss, The Mechanisms-Typical Violence, are those all the tags? huh., it's another 95/5 ratio
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:08:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25025197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trialbyfic/pseuds/trialbyfic
Summary: "Jonny, who was that?" Nastya asks."Who was who?""The person who said they were going planetside for the weaponry. Who was that?"Jonny frowns at her. "What, are you angry at him, or something? Did you two get in an argument? Why are you pretending to not know Tim?"---A look into Nastya's issues with memory.
Relationships: Jonny d'Ville & Nastya Rasputina, The Aurora/Nastya Rasputina
Series: It's been too long [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1801984
Comments: 12
Kudos: 154





	Reaching for memories, there's nothing but dust

**Author's Note:**

> i've written a part 3! i'm not as pleased with this one as i am with the other two- i'm very unsure about the pacing, characterization, and ending- but i'm still posting it on the chance that someone will enjoy reading it! this can be read as a stand-alone, i guess, but what you'll need to know is that instead of leaving the ship in Out, Nastya just spent 5,000 years alone in the same room within the Aurora.
> 
> it was kind of hard to come up with an ending, since a lot of this was projection, and i myself don't have any real solutions to Awful Memory. also, none of my fics that i've written have been beta'd, so... yeah!
> 
> the title is a lyric from "Losing Track" in The Bifrost Incident album!

Nastya doesn't recognize the person that walks into the Common that day. Their wavy, dark brown hair falls just past their shoulders, and a pair of goggles hangs around their neck. Their long, light-brown coat swishes behind them as they come in, and they're met with greetings and banter by the other crew members there. They're going planetside to check out the weaponry, they explain, asking if anyone wants to join them on their trip. Ivy and Ashes agree and follow them out of the room, leaving only Jonny and Nastya in the Common.

  
"Jonny, who was that?" Nastya asks.

"Who was who?"

"The person who said they were going planetside for the weaponry. Who was that?"

  
Jonny frowns at her. "What, are you angry at him, or something? Did you two get in an argument? Why are you pretending to not know Tim?"

  
Nastya sighs. "Explain, Jonny, how I could have argued with someone I've never met?"

  
Jonny looks at her suspiciously for a moment, then his eyes widen, and he goes stiff in his seat. "You're being serious, aren't you?"

  
"I am."

  
"Fuck." Jonny stands up, and starts pacing. "You- has this happened before? Where you've forgotten one of us?"

  
"If it has, I don't remember it. Otherwise, no."

  
"Five thousand years," Jonny mutters, "Knew you couldn't be all that fine after that long." He shakes his head and turns to her, giving her a lost look. "What the hell are we supposed to do about this, then?"

  
"Hmm. You could tell me about him?" Nastya suggests. She's trying very hard to stay calm, but Jonny's reaction isn't doing her any favours.

  
"Yes, right. Okay." Jonny sits himself in a chair across the table from Nastya and starts telling her about Tim. He's their master-at-arms, his mechanisms are his eyes, he plays the guitar, he blew up a moon- Nastya thinks that this would be a fun bit of storytelling, if she wasn't becoming increasingly distressed by how much information she's suddenly missing, seemingly out of nowhere.

  
"Do we trust him?" Nastya interrupts, as Jonny's dramatically reenacting the moment he bit the Kaiser on the nose.

  
"Huh?"

  
"Do we trust Tim? Is he a friend?"

  
"I... yes, I guess you could call him our... 'friend'..." Jonny makes a show of looking pained as he grates out the word- Nastya knows it's a show, because the disdain doesn't reach his eyes, where there's fondness instead- and it's with a pang of sadness that Nastya puts a hand up and asks Jonny to stop.

  
"But I was just getting to the best part!"

  
"Yes, I could tell," Nastya lets out a light chuckle, "But I think it is making me feel worse, you know, hearing about everything I can't remember."

  
"Fine. What's it like, anyway? Is there just a blank space where Tim should be, in your mind?"

  
Nastya closes her eyes. "It's like... I think there's memories there, but they're behind a wall. And when I get close to pushing past the wall, I am struck by this sense of wrongness, and I stop." Nastya opens her eyes. "Does that make sense, Jonny?"

  
"Almost." Jonny leans back in his chair and starts lighting a cigarette. "What now? Should we just wait? See if it comes back to you?"

  
"I suppose, yes."

  
It is a relief when Tim comes back a few days later, and Nastya can remember everything she knows about Tim in entirety. She's not certain when or how it returned to her, but it has, and she lets out a sigh of relief, her hand coming up to rest on her face.

  
Jonny sidles up next to her as they stand in the armoury, watching Tim fuss with a laser gun that he seems unsure how to handle.

  
"Remember, yet?" He whispers.

  
"I do."

  
"Right. Good."

  
Jonny's posture is relaxed, and his tone carries nonchalance, but the worried knit of his eyebrows and the concern on his face is all she needs to resolve to not bring it up if she forgets again. She doesn't need this to turn into something that bothers the others.

  
***

  
"Don't recognize? Don't ask." That's what's written on the index card that Nastya's stuck on the wall beside her bed. It's the only thing on her wall, in fact. She used to have multiple posters and tapestries strewn around her room, all of them with intricate and complex designs that would absorb her attention for hours. But after losing herself so thoroughly in the shard of the Aurora's original hull in a similar way, she'd become afraid of it happening again, and shoved all of them into the bottom of the box that sits in her closet.

  
Nastya had thought that she wouldn't need the reminder at first, figuring that forgetting Tim had been a one-time event. But it quickly became useful far more often than she should've been okay with.

  
She trusted the sign, and didn't question it when a wooden soldier marched onto the bridge, chipper and readily obeying any command that came it's way. She laughed along as a winged person joked with her, and kept up a conversation with someone who looked to be made of brass. The person with the mechanical arm challenged her to a violin battle, and she obliged.

  
The humming of the starship Aurora seems to pick up it's pace as Nastya enters the engine room, although Nastya doesn't know why. If Nastya could remember the Aurora, remember the language that rests in the hiss of her pistons and the rattling of her gears, then Nastya would know that the ship was asking questions- "What's wrong? Why won't you acknowledge me? Hello? Nastya?" But she does not, and so she also doesn't know why the wires she tries to solder spark and snap with more fierceness than a normal wire should.

  
She tries her best to act normal around these strangers, but her performance isn't flawless. How can it be, when she doesn't know them? Perhaps they can sense how disingenuous her ease is, because frequently, she's asked some variant of "are you okay?", and she lies to these unfamiliar faces. Lies, because the sign told her to, and because there's nothing to do about this, anyway. She'll wake up the next day, and she'll remember them, and it'll be fine.

  
It will be fine, Nastya tells herself, as it feels as if a switch has flipped, and suddenly the identities of the people around her are fading, slipping away from her like water from cupped hands. She tries valiantly to hold onto them- Ivy Alexandria, Archivist. Marius von Raum, Medic. Ashes O' Reilly... what? What's their place on the ship? Ivy Alexandria, Archivist. Marius- is that the right name? Or did she make it up? Is Marius even a name? Archivist. Who's their archivist?

  
Nastya pushes against the wall in her mind. The memories sit just behind there, tauntingly close, but she cannot reach them. And when something does swim within her grasp- when her touch finally grazes the surface a detail- it is she who pulls her hand away. (It is wrong, she thinks. It is wrong to know about these people, because they feel so much like strangers, and she cannot know such things about someone she's never met before.)

  
Nastya rushes out of the Common, passing by Jonny on her way.

  
"Hey, what's the hurry for?" He swings out an arm to stop her, but she swiftly dodges it.

  
"I don't recognize anyone in that room," she spits out roughly, not stopping for a second as she continues down the hall.

  
***

  
"What's up with Nastya?" Ashes asks, staring confused at the doorway Nastya had just taken off through.

  
"She..." Jonny considers explaining, then decides against it. "Nothing. She's fine."

  
"Ah, it's not nothing," Ivy sets her book down and gives him a chastising stare. "I know that look. That's your 'Something is worrying me but I will not say what it is, because I am a stubborn fool' look. Now, out with it."

  
Jonny glares at her, but concedes anyway. "Nastya's memory has been messing up. She couldn't remember who Tim was a while ago, and she just said she couldn't recognize any of you."

  
"Oh! Is that's why she's been acting so odd lately?" Marius pipes up. "One day, things'll be normal, and the next, she'll seem way out of her depth, like she's never spoken to me before."

  
"Has been?" Jonny asks wearily. "I thought her forgetting Tim was the only time it's happened before now."

  
"Well, you weren't paying attention, then," Ivy says. "I think we've all noticed something's up, except maybe the Toy Solider."

  
"She'll be fine," Jonny hastens to say. "She remembered Tim, and she'll remember you as well, soon enough."

  
"What's with you two and your denial? Nastya's been saying she's fine, too, though we're well past the point of believing that." Ashes says.

  
"Horrible liars, both of you." Marius adds.

  
"I..." Jonny deflates, his shoulders sagging and his voice losing most of it's edge. "I just want her to be okay," He mumbles, the words uncharacteristically sincere.

  
"It's a bit too late for that," Ivy speaks, her voice softer as well. "But you should go find her. We need to talk with her to figure out how to help."

  
Jonny nods, and leaves to search for Nastya.

  
***

  
"Nastya? Nastya!" Jonny calls, his pounding footsteps echoing harshly through the empty halls. "Where the hell are you? You better not have found another secret room to stay in!" Jonny periodically fires his pistol into parts of the wall where he knows there to be vents, hoping to catch Nastya on one of them. He shoots upwards as he rounds a corner, and backtracks when he hears shuffling and a muffled Sprussian curse.

  
"Nastya, get the fuck down here," Jonny demands, staring up at the bullet hole he's made. There's a heavy sigh, then a panel is moved aside as Nastya drops from the ceiling, her newly injured leg buckling slightly beneath her.

  
"Why the fuck were you hiding in the vents?" Jonny questions, reholstering his pistol.

  
"I wanted somewhere quiet to wait it out." Nastya gestures to her head. "Whatever it is that's making me forget people, it only goes away with time. After that, I'm fine."

  
"I don't think you can pretend it's fine, anymore. The rest of the crew have definitely noticed by now."

  
Nastya looks away from Jonny, and fidgets with the loose threads where the bullet had torn through her clothes. "Do you know how- how scary it is, Jonny? It's not exactly normal to forget the existence of someone that you've known for millenia. Our bodies, as long as our mechanisms are functioning, can always be repaired." Nastya points to the already healing injury in her leg. "But our minds? If something's wrong there, we can't just fix it, like that," Nastya snaps her fingers. "I don't- I can't imagine living forever without being able to remember the crew I've spent forever with, Jonny."

  
"As if that isn't happening already," Jonny says bluntly, and Nastya flinches. "Just... come back to the Common, and we'll work something out. We very well can't find any solutions if we keep avoiding it, can we?"

  
Nastya doesn't say anything, or give any indication that she's heard him. Jonny waves his hand in front of her face, but she doesn't react.

  
"Your name... is indeed Jonny d'Ville, correct?" Is what she replies instead, sounding doubtful, and her body still with what Jonny now realizes is fear.

  
"Wh- yes, that's correct. Nastya, what's going-"

  
"Jonny d'Ville," She interrupts, "The only other mechanized person on the ship when I first arrived."

  
"Yes, you've got that too." Jonny places a hand on Nastya's shoulder and tries to coax her into walking. "Come on. Let's g-"

  
"And your status on the starship Aurora is... Captain?"

  
"...First Mate. I'm First Mate."

  
Nastya makes a wounded sound at that, and her face falls. Jonny tries again to get her to follow, and this time she gives in, walking subdued beside him.

  
***

  
There's a notebook on the table beside Nastya's bed. Each crew member (as well as the Aurora) has a section devoted to them, and whatever details she could gather- what they look like, act like, notable points of their past- are in there. The first page was left blank, for the most imperative information to be scribbled in. "Ivy helped you make this." "If one of them shoots you, feel free to shoot back." "The Aurora is your lover." "Jonny is NOT the Captain."

  
Nastya thumbs through the freshly completed notebook idly, scanning over the sections' titles. The Aurora, Starship. Jonny d'Ville, First Mate. Ashes O'Reilly, Quartermaster. Raphaella La Cognizi, Science Officer. The Toy Solider, Won't leave. Gunpowder Tim, Gunner. Marius von Raum, Medic. Drumbot Brian, Pilot. Ivy Alexandria, Archivist.

  
A few minutes later, her hand is hovering hesitantly over the index card on her wall, before she tears it off, and an addition is made to the notebook's first page. "Don't recognize someone? Just say so. They know. They care."


End file.
